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Climate change occurs when long-term weather patterns begin to shift. These periods of change have occurred throughout the Earth’s history over extended periods of time. However, since the Industrial Revolution the world has been warming at an unprecedented rate. Because of this, the current period of climate change is often referred to as “global warming.” Human activities that release heat-trapping greenhouse gases, such as the burning of fossil fuels, are largely responsible for this increased rate of change. The implications of this global increase in temperature are potentially disastrous and include extreme weather events, rising sea levels and loss of habitat for plants, animals and humans. In Canada, efforts to mitigate climate change include phasing-out coal-fired power plants in Ontario and instituting a carbon tax in British Columbia.

From the outside there was little to distinguish the sleek Toyota Prius from any other car on the streets of Timmins, Ont. But when the driver turned the key, it was clear this was no ordinary sedan. The only sound as the Prius pulled away was the gentle hum of an electric motor.

Relations between the two men are cool, bordering on icy, as could be expected between leaders who represent opposite sides in the religious and political struggle that has bathed Northern Ireland in blood for three decades.

Bill Smith, a 55-year-old heavy-machine operator from Fredericton, knows these are his salad days revisited. As one of 500 Canadian men participating in the clinical trials of the impotency drug Viagra, he has been getting samples for two years. "They're free, so why not use them?" he says.

Before the end of this year, Ottawa heart surgeon Dr. Wilbert Keon hopes to open the chest of a patient whose heart has reached a state of "terminal failure" and install a shiny plastic-encased object a little larger than a mans fist.

Strange things were happening to Philip Watts. When he woke in the morning he noticed a spray of brown markings on his pillow, which at first looked like coffee grounds. He soon realized they were caused by blood.

In the spring of 1997, William Boyle, a microbiologist at Amgen Inc., a drug company based near Los Angeles, placed a telephone call to Dr. Josef Penninger, an immunologist at the firm's Toronto offshoot, the Amgen Research Institute.

By enduring frequent blood transfusions and painful injections that allow a drug to be pumped into her body at night, 14-year-old Julie Vizza has survived a rare blood disease called thalassemia that leaves her body dangerously short of oxygen.

Despite how it may seem some days as the public tunes into the debate over health-care funding, governments in Canada have not turned off the tap. Canadians spent an estimated $76.6 billion on health care in 1997, up from $75.

Of the various means of travel by land, sea, and air, only the railways, with the rhythmic clickety-clack of the wheels and the scream of the locomotive whistle, have provided an obvious subject for imitation in music.

CANADIANS ARE masters of the universe. Just look at the numbers. Sure, the U.S. leads the world in spending on space research, laying out roughly US$7 per American each year, while Britain, France and Germany budget between US$4 and US$5 for every citizen.

Everybody agrees it was a dirty job. When Canadian Peacekeepers arrived in Croatia in 1993, many had to work near abandoned industrial sites destroyed during the war that had torn apart the old Yugoslavia. Some got covered in reddish grit while filling sandbags.

Maj. Rod Babiuk picked up his brass abacus for a buck at a garage sale, while many of his colleagues at CFB Kingston hunted down wooden versions of the beaded counting machines. No, the army has not developed a sudden interest in ancient math.

No one knows exactly what the surface of Mars is like, but Robert Zubrin has a pretty good idea. At least some of it, he says, is much like a frozen, god-forsaken corner of the Canadian Arctic called Haughton Crater. The terrain is similar - rough-strewn rock on the floor of a crater 16 km across.

On all sides, the relief was obvious. Last week, the poisonous, 2 ½-year feud that pitted internationally acclaimed blood researcher Dr. Nancy Olivieri against the prestige and power of Toronto's Hospital for Sick Children ended in a face-saving compromise.